


lilac petals & a speaker's dream

by MapleTreeway



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Language of Flowers, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-20 19:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21062057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapleTreeway/pseuds/MapleTreeway
Summary: Sometimes he loves him so much that the words twirl out from his lips in petals of purple lilacs. They tumble down his sharp chin, perfumed water, and get lost on his chest; and every time he tries to right this egregious wrong — to pick up the petals, to say it fresh — more fall.





	lilac petals & a speaker's dream

Sometimes he loves him so much that the words twirl out from his lips in petals of purple lilacs. They tumble down his sharp chin, perfumed water, and get lost on his chest; and every time he tries to right this egregious wrong — to pick up the petals, to say it fresh — more fall.

Sometimes he’s covered in years’ worth of petals. He lies awake in his bed, spills the flower from his lips, and creates himself a three-meter-deep swimming pool of which to float in. It’s shining, the sun, and it lands on his pale skin. He thinks of him, of his blond hair and bastardly smile and every look his blue eyes have ever given him. It’s shining, the sun, and raindrops land on his pale skin.

There’s a part of him that hates seeing them. He wishes to cover his eyes, to hide. He drowns in the swimming pool during the worst of it. He drowns, finds no relief. Turns to his houseplants and berates them in place of himself. They shake, quiver, hide from him in his own stead. He screams out torn amaryllises and cries anemones from his serpent eyes and nothing good ever comes from it.

He stores the lilacs in bottles, vials, decanters. Saves them in case one day he stops blooming, nothing left to give, and wants to tangibly remember the vivid purple hues later. Such a time is unlikely to pass, however, and he knows it full well. So he stores them in bottles, vials, decanters. Gives them as gifts to him, disguised as vintage wine or hidden in-between the pages of coveted books. 

He wonders if he’s been noticed. And begonias erupt from under his ribcage, choke his voicebox clean quiet. Noticed, yet met with candytufts under his beloved’s spine. 

But then — oh, then — a gardenia shoots up and out his beloved’s back. Another and another and another and until they pullulate. He watches them, silent, as they reach with tentativeness for the sunlight. It takes a bomb to burst them wide open, aching. It takes a bomb for them to bloom. And he sees them, clear as his own lilacs, and wonders if they’ve been noticed, felt, or seen.

The gardenias do not fall off, do not appear to drown Aziraphale. If he were any less of a demon, envy would claw its way up Crowley’s throat — how could he not feel its force, knowing what his lilacs did to him? — and wither his flowers inside. Wrench the health right downwards and out. But that was not him, not his nature, not his viewpoint on things. The gardenias were in bloom, white as Aziraphale’s hair under moonlight, and that was all that mattered.

Years fly, whip around them as they always have done. He gives Aziraphale a lift home, 1941, and then he blinks. He blinks, and Aziraphale is inside the Bentley again with a tartan thermos, 1967. There are bleeding hearts spilling from Aziraphale’s hands as he hands him the holy water. Lilacs tumble in haste from Crowley’s own mouth.  _ I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go.  _

_ You go too fast for me, Crowley. _

Pink camellias cover the passenger seat. Cover the door handle. He's left in a pool of his own lilacs, and he feels, well and truly feels, that this time he's been drowned.


End file.
